On The Vergecast: GPT-5, DOGE, ScarJo, and Studio Displays. And a lot of fake transparency.
On The Vergecast: GPT-5, DOGE, ScarJo, and Studio Displays. And a lot of fake transparency.
It’s hard to think of a time when a single figure has been so central to seemingly everything in the way that Elon Musk is right now. Musk is overseeing and overhauling the federal government, while bending it toward his own financial gain. He’s also ubiquitous in the artificial intelligence world, where this week he offered to buy part of OpenAI, adding more pressure and chaos to an already complicated company in an already complicated spot.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk a lot about Elon Musk. (For what it’s worth: we hear those of you who would like us to talk less about Musk on the show. Frankly, we’d also like to talk less about Musk on the show! And we’re working on ways to do that. But what’s happening with DOGE in particular is so urgent and important and central to all the things The Verge cares about that we feel we have to keep talking about it. We want outlets too, though, and we’ll find them together.) We talk about the latest with DOGE, look through some deeply silly government websites, and dig into all the ways the Trump administration is using boring government information to its benefit.
There is also more OpenAI news! The company continues to ship, and talk about shipping, interesting products. This week, CEO Sam Altman shared plans for GPT-4.5 and GPT-5, which sound like a mix of new technology and some welcome usability improvements. OpenAI also updated and expanded its Model Spec, which shares rules and ideas for how AI models should behave. (It’s a fascinating read.) And, of course, there’s more Scarlett Johansson AI deepfake drama. Poor ScarJo.
After all that, we finally get to some gadget news. There are rumors of both a new Studio Display and a new iPhone SE coming soon from Apple, and we’re substantially more excited about one than the other. There’s a new Jeep with some terrible new ideas about advertising, Apple TV Plus is on Android, YouTube is all over TVs, David bought some new headphones, and Brendan Carr is still doing censorship. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, first on all things OpenAI:
And in DOGE and the Trump administration:
And in the lightning round: